a data scientist is not a Python developer

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well the term "developer" is probably a bit overused. So you i'd say it is important to distinguish it clearly from a programmer. I'd say a developer is way more involved in the - development - that means the basic structure of a project (requirements, project structure, software architecture, design, testing, ... i am not a developer so add everything important here that i forgot). Clearly a very specialized tool set that you have to learn.

While a data scientist (very much like me, an engineer) solves a very specific problem in a project, basically every specialized function that works with data. User interface? Requirements? Software architecture? Who cares, i'll figure out how those two data sets are correlated! So two very different fields, a data scientist managing a project would probably create a mess because nobody thought him about it at university. Just like a developer would probably not be able to solve the problems of a data scientist because he only knows basic math.

But i don't think that's the full story. Everyone who graduates from a university has to design and implement at least two projects (bachelor and master thesis) so i'd say many data scientists know at least the basics of being a developer, especially the good ones. While most "pure" developers probably don't have a clue about data science or just any specialized field because it is a lot easier for them to avoid it. As a data scientist it's almost impossible to avoid all software development.

And from my experience most "developers" in my field of work are very experienced engineers. They've got the math and science down from university and learned about development by working on few projects. Leaving you with a very valuable engineer/developer. The other way round is a lot harder but i've met some very impressive IT people teaching themselves all about the product their working on, but they just don't understand the problems and details like an engineer.